So, this has been brought up on various websites throughout the net, and I thought it would be cool to discuss it here: the Hitler gun control debate.
You guys may know that conservatives in the U.S. (I'm one myself) have pointed to Hitler as a prime example of the dangers of gun control. They say that Hitler took firearms away from citizens before beginning his mass murders via camps and gas chambers. Anyway, I'm aware that many liberal people say that this claim is false; that Hitler did not ban guns in Germany, but actually loosened firearm restrictions. Of course, conservatives and liberals have argued about this and it is basically, in a nutshell, a debate about whether Hitler was a right-winger or left-winger, depending on his (real life) gun policies.
The reason I brought this up here is because the liberal argument that Hitler loosened gun laws is challenged by a survivor of the Third Reich: Austrian woman Kitty Werthmann. Look her up on youtube to see a video of her talking about the experiences she had under the Nazi regime. She says in one video that Hitler did, in fact, ban guns in Austria. And if he banned guns in Austria, then surely he banned them in the rest of the Third Reich, right? IDK. It seems like a sensible suggestion. At any rate, most people agree that he banned guns from the hands of the Jewish people, if no one else. What are your thoughts? How would you respond to the claims made by Kitty Werthmann?

Bryan Ekers

11-18-2013, 04:49 PM

Is it really necessary to try to classify Hitler on a left-right political spectrum? The lesson he (and Stalin, and Mao, and any other totalitarian dictator) offers is about abandoning rule of law and replacing it with rule of whim.

Blaster Master

11-18-2013, 05:10 PM

My response is, it doesn't matter. Hitler was an evil man, who did evil things, but regardless of what his stance was, it means nothing. For instance, Hitler loved dogs; does this mean that dogs are bad pets?

That said, there may be something interesting in saying that Hitler did something and that helped him do something else. But even if he banned guns, how much can we say it did or didn't help him do what he did. So, we're still just looking at a single data point. And really, considering guns are about as available in the US as they are anywhere in the civilized world, and they're effectively banned in a number of European countries, and I don't think there's any realistic concern of something akin to the acts of Hitler happening in either place, I'm not sure that, even if we could show a correlation, that it's relevant anymore.

And let's even say that we could demonstrate that he did it and it helped him enact his policies and it wasn't an isolated incident since a number of other dictators did something similar... so what? Do you really think anyone is going to be convinced to change their minds by being compared to Hitler? It just makes them dig in their heels harder and fight back.

I'm actually favorable to gun rights, and I've seen this discussion come up before, and I wish it would just go away. There's plenty of other more relevant points to discuss for both sides, whether it's constitutional interpretation, effectiveness or not in crime deterence, accidents and safety, sports, mass shootings and terrorism, etc. that we just don't need to bring Hitler into the discussion.

Grumman

11-18-2013, 05:44 PM

You guys may know that conservatives in the U.S. (I'm one myself) have pointed to Hitler as a prime example of the dangers of gun control. They say that Hitler took firearms away from citizens before beginning his mass murders via camps and gas chambers. Anyway, I'm aware that many liberal people say that this claim is false; that Hitler did not ban guns in Germany, but actually loosened firearm restrictions.
Whether or not Hitler disarmed his own side is a red herring. The government always has guns on its side - whether among the general populace or only within the military. What Hitler did was disarm the people he didn't like - the Jews - and that made it easier to kill them.

Alessan

11-18-2013, 05:56 PM

If German civilians had had guns, they would have used them to kill more Jews.

Voyager

11-18-2013, 05:56 PM

A couple of things to think about.
1. If Hitler banned private gun ownership in occupied France, would that imply they would also be banned in Germany?
2. Let's say he did make them more strict. Therefore guns were easier to obtain under the Weimer Republic. The Nazis came to power in some part because they organized a private army. Perhaps loose gun laws helped in the creation of an oppressive state.

I_Know_Nothing

11-18-2013, 06:05 PM

He also build highways. These highways were used to efficiently move around military assets. I haven't yet met anyone who was afraid of highways because the government might use them to take away people rights.

Latro

11-18-2013, 06:07 PM

They say that Hitler took firearms away from citizens before beginning his mass murders via camps and gas chambers.

Which is a load of bull.

European city and townsfolk did not have any guns to take away in the first place.
Maybe an occasional handgun, from gramps, who was an officer in the army.

In the countryside it would be different. Nearly every farm would have a shotgun and the richer people would also have hunting rifles.
The implication is like there were assaultrifles and machineguns galore that Hitler took away so he could have his eeeevil ways.

ZPG Zealot

11-18-2013, 06:19 PM

According to members of my family that were also around at that time, Hitler actually handed out quite a lot of firearms in occupied lands to collaborators like the Croatian Utasha who then used them to kill neighbors. The shortages of weapons for resistance groups in the Balkans which did occur in some areas were never caused by gun control laws, but usually by extreme poverty. Dirt poor laborers don't buy rifles if hunting is not likely to substantially increase the family food supply. And of course some places like Montenegro and parts of Albania had large amounts of weapons (and sixteen year olds that had never seen the world outside of family compounds because of the risk of them being shot in blood vendettas).

Trinopus

11-18-2013, 06:41 PM

. . . I haven't yet met anyone who was afraid of highways because the government might use them to take away people rights.

Grin! They actually were crawling around back when Bill Clinton was President. The Interstate System was going to be used by Chinese tank units to invade from their vast encampment in Mexico, on a signal given by the Emergency Broadcast System.

This was back when "Black Helicopters" first made it as a conspiracy meme.

I believe Cecil even had a column on the mysterious symbols and letters on the backs of the big Interstate Highway road signs, which were said to be navigation directions for the invaders.

Nostalgic paranoia!

Simplicio

11-18-2013, 07:03 PM

Agree with others, the question is pretty irrelevant. The bad things about Hitler don't have anything to do with his gun policies, whatever they were.

But in anycase, I don't think the 70 year old memories of one Austrian woman are particularly convincing evidence, given that by 1938 the Germans had in fact developed writing, and thus German gun laws were written down and people today can read them to find out what they were. Treating it like some sort of mystery we can meaningfully debate about is silly.

Little Nemo

11-18-2013, 07:27 PM

Is it really necessary to try to classify Hitler on a left-right political spectrum? The lesson he (and Stalin, and Mao, and any other totalitarian dictator) offers is about abandoning rule of law and replacing it with rule of whim.I think it's a valid debate.

Some conservatives argue that you can never be too conservative - that no matter how far you move to the right, things are always improved by moving further in that direction. Opponents will counter this idea by offering Hitler as an example of a right wing leader who "went too far" - their argument is that you need to reverse direction at some point and move away from the right and back towards the center.

So the debate over Hitler's ideology because a central issue of this current debate. Conservatives who favor the "keep moving to the right" argument will rebut the Hitler argument by saying that Hitler was not a right winger at all. They argue that Hitler was a left winger and therefore by moving further to the right, you're moving further away from Hitler not nearer to him.

Grumman

11-18-2013, 07:36 PM

Agree with others, the question is pretty irrelevant. The bad things about Hitler don't have anything to do with his gun policies, whatever they were.
Really? You believe, for example, that it's a complete coincidence that the very next day after Krystallnacht, the Nazis announced a law called Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons?

RickJay

11-18-2013, 07:42 PM

Really? You believe, for example, that it's a complete coincidence that the very next day after Krystallnacht, the Nazis announced a law called Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons?
So they didn't do it BEFORE? Just how effective were Jewish weapons in preventing it?

Grumman

11-18-2013, 07:44 PM

So they didn't do it BEFORE? Just how effective were Jewish weapons in preventing it?
They did do it before, that's just the one which didn't bother to hide it behind a more neutral title.

Amateur Barbarian

11-18-2013, 07:51 PM

He also build highways. These highways were used to efficiently move around military assets. I haven't yet met anyone who was afraid of highways because the government might use them to take away people rights.
Wellll... the US interstate highway system was built by a general who had admired how quickly the Germans could move their men and materiel around, with the idea that the US might - *ahem* - need to move a lot of troops and materiel around some sunny day. He even ensured that the highways had long straight stretches that could land transports and bombers.

So maybe we should be afraid. :D

Trinopus

11-18-2013, 08:55 PM

. . . He even ensured that the highways had long straight stretches that could land transports and bombers. . . .

Well...snopes says no... (http://snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp)

(Even if it were true in the past...would it be true today? Billboards, and roadside businesses, and power pylons, and trees, and... I sure as heck wouldn't want to try to land a plane on an interstate!)

Bryan Ekers

11-18-2013, 09:00 PM

I think it's a valid debate.

Some conservatives argue that you can never be too conservative - that no matter how far you move to the right, things are always improved by moving further in that direction. Opponents will counter this idea by offering Hitler as an example of a right wing leader who "went too far" - their argument is that you need to reverse direction at some point and move away from the right and back towards the center.

That doesn't strike me as much of a debate - just an effort at keeping extremists in check. Seriously, how long would you indulge someone who thinks full-on fascism (or communism, or utterly unrestrained free-market capitalism etc.) is a good idea?

So the debate over Hitler's ideology because a central issue of this current debate. Conservatives who favor the "keep moving to the right" argument will rebut the Hitler argument by saying that Hitler was not a right winger at all. They argue that Hitler was a left winger and therefore by moving further to the right, you're moving further away from Hitler not nearer to him.

And this is why debating them is a waste of time - they'll handwave away any cautionary examples by trying to redefine the terms. "Hitler believed in X and we don't, so there's no chance we'll end up like Hitler", as though Hitler had a monopoly on evil.

Little Nemo

11-18-2013, 09:08 PM

Wellll... the US interstate highway system was built by a general who had admired how quickly the Germans could move their men and materiel around, with the idea that the US might - *ahem* - need to move a lot of troops and materiel around some sunny day. He even ensured that the highways had long straight stretches that could land transports and bombers.

So maybe we should be afraid. :D

Well...snopes says no... (http://snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp)

(Even if it were true in the past...would it be true today? Billboards, and roadside businesses, and power pylons, and trees, and... I sure as heck wouldn't want to try to land a plane on an interstate!)Snopes missed one other important point in their rebuttal of this rumor. The only way the American military would need a network of emergency runways would be if we were fighting a war here in America. And if we were fighting a war like that, the last thing we'd want to have is hundreds of runways all over the country for the enemy to use for his aircraft. Eisenhower, who had led one of the biggest invasions in history, would have completely understood the value of captured runways to an invader and certainly wouldn't have supported creating them in his own country.

njtt

11-18-2013, 09:08 PM

Even if the citizens of Germany had had plenty of guns, it would have done nothing to prevent the holocaust. Most of German citizens either (a) didn't know it was happening, or (b) would have approved, at least in broad terms, or (c) both. If there had been more guns about in private hands, more Jews would have been killed earlier on in the Nazi era, such as during Kristalnacht and similar events. If the Jews themselves had had more guns, they might have taken a few Nazis with them, but they wouldn't have won.

Guns are primarily good for causing deaths, not for preventing them.

Bryan Ekers

11-18-2013, 09:28 PM

Well, let's say the fantasy is that one person with one gun can change the world, that every gun owner imagines himself a potential hero who saves the world from a dictator, becomes a hunter of fascists.

ha-ha-ha

kellner

11-18-2013, 09:43 PM

Nazi firearms policy was a mixed bag.

They did relax the actual law. Increasing gun ownership and proficiency was an official goal. After their reforms the average adult non-jewish person could buy all the long arms they wanted over the counter (permit and registration required for handguns, just as before.) They introduced firearms training in the mandatory Hitler Youth as well as at least some schools and of course they had conscription even in peacetime. They also issued service weapons to more people.

On the other hand by executive decree they denied Jews the necessary "reliability", putting them in the same position as convicted felons or the mentally ill. They did seize their firearms and they used handgun registration data in the process.

So, take your pick.

(Btw. even today after decades of much more restrictive laws and changed cultural attitudes both the number of privately owned firearms and the number of households with firearms per capita are about a third of the numbers in the US. Sure, that's a lot less, but not really the orders of magnitude that people on both sides of the Atlantic tend to imagine.)

so it goes

11-18-2013, 10:10 PM

Hi-cool site.

Funny enough, I'm currently reading Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock. Thus far in the book, Hitler is slowly gaining power through an uncanny political prowess, understanding of prevailing mood of the populace i.e. anger and powerlessness as a consequence of the Treaty of Versaille, and really a grotesqely comic tendancy to be underestimated.

I'm not seeing (at least not yet) where ol' adolph would recognize an up-side to disarming the general population-he needs them while he's coming up, and later his police state is so highly organized and brutal, that disarmament would be unnecessary. Also, comprehensive gun control would likely undermine Hitler's near constant rhetoric that everything he was doing was merely Nationalism, represented and embodied in naziism.

As far as the Jewish and other persecuted peoples being allowed arms-the point can be ceded by the very fact that they were eventually forced to relinquish EVERYTHING OF VALUE TO THEM, only starting with their posessions.

Captain Amazing

11-18-2013, 10:49 PM

Really? You believe, for example, that it's a complete coincidence that the very next day after Krystallnacht, the Nazis announced a law called Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons?

The thing is, the Nazis didn't let Jews do a lot of things. I think the fact that the German government didn't let Jews own guns doesn't say the Nazis loved gun control; just that the Nazis didn't like Jews, because owning guns was just one of a list of things that Jews weren't allowed to do (like be citizens, go to school, marry or have sex with non-Jews, own businesses, own really anything, live.)

Ultimately, the Nazis didn't care that much if the average German citizen owned a gun. Why would they? If anything, it was the opposite. The Hitler Youth, for example, offered rifle training. It makes sense. If you're planning on conscripting young men when they get old enough, it's a leg up if they're familiar with gun use and safety before they join the army.

Dissonance

11-19-2013, 12:17 AM

If German civilians had had guns, they would have used them to kill more Jews.This. It's not as if the Germans had any great difficulty quashing armed Jewish uprising when it did occur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising). As Alessan would no doubt attest the state of Israel wasn't created as a result of the personal ownership of firearms by the Jewish citizenry.

Ibn Warraq

11-19-2013, 12:33 AM

This. It's not as if the Germans had any great difficulty quashing armed Jewish uprising when it did occur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising). As Alessan would no doubt attest the state of Israel wasn't created as a result of the personal ownership of firearms by the Jewish citizenry.

Well, not having enough rifles to arm all your soldiers doesn't help.

Kobal2

11-19-2013, 01:32 AM

A couple of things to think about.
1. If Hitler banned private gun ownership in occupied France, would that imply they would also be banned in Germany?

Hitler had no nominal authority over occupied France, the Pétain government was independent and autonomous. Of course, it bent over backwards to please the Nazis, but that's a different issue.

Besides, Pétain had no need to ban (most) private gun ownership in occupied France, considering weapons had already been heavily restricted back in '39 to avoid a Russian Revolution style thing should the war drag on. These restrictions were even further strengthened on May 10, 1940 (the day the Germans kicked the door in) ; so quite a bit before the country fell in late June.

PigArcher

11-19-2013, 10:12 AM

Well, not having enough rifles to arm all your soldiers doesn't help.

Which, by definition, has nothing to do with private ownership of firearms.

Voyager

11-19-2013, 12:30 PM

Hitler had no nominal authority over occupied France, the Pétain government was independent and autonomous. Of course, it bent over backwards to please the Nazis, but that's a different issue.

Besides, Pétain had no need to ban (most) private gun ownership in occupied France, considering weapons had already been heavily restricted back in '39 to avoid a Russian Revolution style thing should the war drag on. These restrictions were even further strengthened on May 10, 1940 (the day the Germans kicked the door in) ; so quite a bit before the country fell in late June.

1. I said occupied France, not Vichy France. Though Vichy France might have been considered occupied in a sense, they pretended it wasn't - for a while.

2. Unless you think more private ownership of guns would have kept the Nazis from winning, I don't understand what the state of gun laws before the invasion has to do with anything.

Voyager

11-19-2013, 12:33 PM

Well...snopes says no... (http://snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp)

(Even if it were true in the past...would it be true today? Billboards, and roadside businesses, and power pylons, and trees, and... I sure as heck wouldn't want to try to land a plane on an interstate!)

Never driven I80 in Wyoming I take it.
People do land small planes on interstates - I remember a couple of examples around here. I'm not sure I'd want to try it with a bomber, though.

Ibn Warraq

11-21-2013, 12:19 AM

Which, by definition, has nothing to do with private ownership of firearms.

I was making a joke involving the way many Israelis like to remember their War for Independence in 1948, not attempting to make a serious point.

Little Nemo

11-21-2013, 07:00 AM

Well, let's say the fantasy is that one person with one gun can change the world, that every gun owner imagines himself a potential hero who saves the world from a dictator, becomes a hunter of fascists.

ha-ha-haIt worked for B.J. Blazkowicz.

Merneith

11-21-2013, 07:27 AM

... given that by 1938 the Germans had in fact developed writing, and thus German gun laws were written down and people today can read them to find out what they were. Treating it like some sort of mystery we can meaningfully debate about is silly.

Not to pick on Simplicio, because I'm not going to go google it either, but surely, this is a factual question with factual answers? What were the gun laws in Germany (and France, Poland, etc) when Hitler came to power and what changes did Hitler and his party make to those laws?

If there's a debate to be had here, you have to start with the facts.

Grumman

11-21-2013, 08:30 AM

The thing is, the Nazis didn't let Jews do a lot of things. I think the fact that the German government didn't let Jews own guns doesn't say the Nazis loved gun control; just that the Nazis didn't like Jews, because owning guns was just one of a list of things that Jews weren't allowed to do (like be citizens, go to school, marry or have sex with non-Jews, own businesses, own really anything, live.)
That's a red herring. It does not matter that the Nazis did not love gun control for gun control's sake, because they loved gun control as a weapon. That is what you should be taking away from this: that forbidding people the right to defend themselves, the right of their children to be educated, the right to associate freely with others, are all weapons that can and have been used to oppress innocent people.

steronz

11-21-2013, 08:55 AM

That's a red herring. It does not matter that the Nazis did not love gun control for gun control's sake, because they loved gun control as a weapon. That is what you should be taking away from this: that forbidding people the right to defend themselves, the right of their children to be educated, the right to associate freely with others, are all weapons that can and have been used to oppress innocent people.

See, I think the gun control angle is a red herring. There's a vast chasm between a democratically elected government saying "OK, no private citizens are allowed to own guns," and a fascist government saying "This ethnic group isn't allowed to do a bunch of things." The horror of the German laws isn't that they banned gun ownership, it's that the specifically targeted the Jews.

I also think it's relevant to view the gun restrictions in context of both their actual impact (how many guns were confiscated, did it make a lick of difference) and the scope of all the restrictions on Jews (did the German government single out gun ownership as something especially worrying, or did they just start writing laws left and right to restrict all kinds of freedoms).

Dissonance

11-21-2013, 10:32 AM

That's a red herring. It does not matter that the Nazis did not love gun control for gun control's sake, because they loved gun control as a weapon. That is what you should be taking away from this: that forbidding people the right to defend themselves, the right of their children to be educated, the right to associate freely with others, are all weapons that can and have been used to oppress innocent people.A red herring? You honestly consider it a red herring that the Nazis passed laws forbidding Jews from working in most occupations, marrying non-Jews, declared any existing marriages null and void, made Jews non-citizens, required Jews to wear yellow stars, expelled Jewish children from school, forbade Jews from owning telephones or radios, or cats, or dogs, or birds, forbade Jews from using public telephones, required Jews to add Sarah or Israel as their middle names if their first name wasn't "Jewish" enough, forbade Jews from owning businesses and confiscated those owned by Jews, established curfews for Jews, banned Jews from public parks, restaurants, swimming pools and benches, confiscated property, required Jews to live in designated ghettos and eventually shipped them off to concentration and later death camps to be a red herring? What's important and the only relevant thing to be taken from all of this is that the Nazis used gun control? Which, by the way, forbade Jews from owning guns but (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Germany#The_1938_German_Weapons_Act) The groups of people who were exempt from the acquisition permit requirement expanded. Holders of annual hunting permits, government workers, and NSDAP members were no longer subject to gun ownership restrictions. Prior to the 1938 law, only officials of the central government, the states, and employees of the German Reichsbahn Railways were exempted.Note the bolded bit, members of the NSDAP (the Nazi party) were now exempted from gun ownership restrictions in the 1938 law; the law actually expanded gun ownership rights from the 1928 law, not restricted it. Unless of course you happened to be a Jew, but then you had already been made a non-citizen by that point.

Grumman

11-21-2013, 10:35 AM

A red herring? You honestly consider it a red herring that the Nazis passed laws forbidding Jews from...
No.
That's a red herring. It does not matter that the Nazis did not love gun control for gun control's sake...
Learn to read.

kellner

11-21-2013, 11:50 AM

Not to pick on Simplicio, because I'm not going to go google it either, but surely, this is a factual question with factual answers? What were the gun laws in Germany (and France, Poland, etc) when Hitler came to power and what changes did Hitler and his party make to those laws?

If there's a debate to be had here, you have to start with the facts.

Of course the question about the gun laws is a factual one (as long as you don't insist on trying to map that onto present US gun politics.) Unfortunately the range of freely available translations of historical German legislation leaves a lot to be desired. It is all available in German, but that's probably not very useful here. However I don't think the general facts are really in dispute at this point. If anyone has specific questions I might be able to answer them, but "What was the law and how did it change?" is a little broad.

Dissonance

11-21-2013, 12:49 PM

No.Funny, you just called this:The thing is, the Nazis didn't let Jews do a lot of things. I think the fact that the German government didn't let Jews own guns doesn't say the Nazis loved gun control; just that the Nazis didn't like Jews, because owning guns was just one of a list of things that Jews weren't allowed to do (like be citizens, go to school, marry or have sex with non-Jews, own businesses, own really anything, live.)A red herring. Now you're saying you didn't. Which is it?

Learn to read.Again, funny. Take your own advice and learn to read. The Nazis didn't expand gun control. They eased gun control; if you were a member of the NSDAP you were no longer subject to gun ownership restrictions.

Captain Amazing

11-21-2013, 07:14 PM

That is what you should be taking away from this: that forbidding people the right to defend themselves, the right of their children to be educated, the right to associate freely with others, are all weapons that can and have been used to oppress innocent people.

Well, obviously. That was my point. Germany during the Nazi period stripped Jews of all their rights. Singling out the gun restrictions is silly, it seems to me. They took away the right of Jews to do anything.

Budget Player Cadet

11-22-2013, 12:53 AM

That's a red herring. It does not matter that the Nazis did not love gun control for gun control's sake, because they loved gun control as a weapon. That is what you should be taking away from this: that forbidding people the right to defend themselves, the right of their children to be educated, the right to associate freely with others, are all weapons that can and have been used to oppress innocent people.

Would you derive any statement about modern gun control from the facts of Nazi Germany?

Grumman

11-22-2013, 04:09 AM

Well, obviously. That was my point. Germany during the Nazi period stripped Jews of all their rights. Singling out the gun restrictions is silly, it seems to me. They took away the right of Jews to do anything.
Doing any of those things is bad. You seem to think it's only bad if you do all of them.

Legislating that people cannot send their children to school is bad, even if you don't also forbid them from marrying.
Legislating that people cannot own their own business is bad, even if you don't also prohibit their children from going to school.
And legislating that people should have neither the right nor the ability to protect their own lives from an aggressor is bad, even if you don't also ban them from owning a business.

Latro

11-22-2013, 06:07 AM

Doing any of those things is bad. You seem to think it's only bad if you do all of them.

You,on the other hand, seem to be thinking;

Nazis == bad
Nazis had gun control ----> guncontrol == bad

Kobal2

11-22-2013, 06:59 AM

1. I said occupied France, not Vichy France. Though Vichy France might have been considered occupied in a sense, they pretended it wasn't - for a while.

Right, brainfart there. Sorry.

2. Unless you think more private ownership of guns would have kept the Nazis from winning, I don't understand what the state of gun laws before the invasion has to do with anything.

My point was that Hitler never had to grab the French people's guns in the first place (or spend any effort doing so) because they'd already been grabbed earlier, by a strictly non-Nazi government.

More private ownership of guns in occupied France (or in in-the-process-of-getting-blitzed France, for that matter) would have accomplished jack squat. Even as far as the Resistance is concerned - the Brits kept sprinkling much of Europe with cheap Stens anyway, and where they didn't the maquisards would typically bushwhack a few isolated German soldiers or police goons and take theirs. Maybe raid a kommandantur or a police station to tool up further, and go from there.

Dissonance

11-22-2013, 03:05 PM

Doing any of those things is bad. You seem to think it's only bad if you do all of them.That is the most patently absurd reading of what was actually written imaginable. It has no relation to anything Captain Amazing actually wrote. It's no wonder you consider it a red herring.

Quartz

11-23-2013, 06:40 AM

So, this has been brought up on various websites throughout the net, and I thought it would be cool to discuss it here: the Hitler gun control debate.
You guys may know that conservatives in the U.S. (I'm one myself) have pointed to Hitler as a prime example of the dangers of gun control. They say that Hitler took firearms away from citizens before beginning his mass murders via camps and gas chambers.

I just think they're conflating Hitler with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge who did confiscate guns before killings.

msmith537

11-23-2013, 07:32 AM

I find it amusing when conservatives point to anything having to do with Hitler or the Nazis to defend their conservative ideology.

Hitler came into power by playing on people's fears, appealing to an unquestioning sense of nationalism, and by disenfranchising unpopular minorities all with the aid of a non-stop propaganda machine. Which party does that sound more like?

BrainGlutton

11-23-2013, 12:05 PM

My response is, it doesn't matter. Hitler was an evil man, who did evil things, but regardless of what his stance was, it means nothing. For instance, Hitler loved dogs; does this mean that dogs are bad pets?

No, but it does mean they're good fucks.

so it goes

11-23-2013, 01:24 PM

Been keepin up w/ this thread since my original post to see if I had missed something fundamental to my thoughts on hitler & gun control, & I see-at least within the parameters of this discussion-that I have not.

Among other things, hitler was a megalomaniac. I don't believe for a second that he thought either the masses or the Jews were a serious threat to his power.

Yep, the rights that hitler took from the Jews was done through legislation-everything he did from his climb to power to his siezing & occupation of land was done scrupulously within the strict letter of law. So, okay, this can be construed as a cautionary tale in general ( but we already knew that, right?), but I contend that hitler's actions against the Jewish people should be taken as a whole: to demoralize them, make a good dog & pony show for all of the German people, and to feed...whatever it was in him that ate that shit up.

In short, hitler was so convinced of arian superiority that he never doubted his final solution would be carried out. It was his will.

Alessan

11-23-2013, 01:26 PM

I don't believe for a second that he thought either the masses or the Jews were a serious threat to his power.

Of course not - Hitler was popular. For every armed rebel there would have been five armed citizens willing to help the authorities in putting them down.

so it goes

11-23-2013, 02:14 PM

Of course not - Hitler was popular. For every armed rebel there would have been five armed citizens willing to help the authorities in putting them down.

German government, post treaty of Versaille, was CRAZY complicated w/several parties participating in the legislature and all competing for elections and their chance to come to power. I don't believe hitler ever did reach an actual majority in elections during his coming up. A whole lot of people who turned in Jews & other German citizens, did so out of fear of reprisal- often their own children would tell on them if they turned a blind eye to some infraction of nazi law or ideology.

Alessan

11-23-2013, 04:20 PM

German government, post treaty of Versaille, was CRAZY complicated w/several parties participating in the legislature and all competing for elections and their chance to come to power. I don't believe hitler ever did reach an actual majority in elections during his coming up. A whole lot of people who turned in Jews & other German citizens, did so out of fear of reprisal- often their own children would tell on them if they turned a blind eye to some infraction of nazi law or ideology.

Yeah, and a lot more did it willingly.

Maybe in 1933 Hitler didn't have the absolute support of the German people. But by 1936 or so they were behind him en masse. And even if they didn't agree with him, he was the government, and good citizens do what the government says.